This invention relates in general to a filled dough ball shaping apparatus employed to form filled dough ball bodies of desired configuration prior to freezing, drying, baking, frying, steaming, or otherwise cooking the items. More specifically, the present invention relates to a filled dough ball receiving, shaping, dividing and forming machine for making filled dough ball bodies of a predetermined weight and configuration of an initially filled and encrusted, spherically-shaped dough ball into smaller shaped and sealed, filled and encrusted dough balls in a continuous manner. The present invention not only cuts larger spherical filled dough balls, but compresses, seals and cuts filled and encrusted dough balls into symmetrically shaped halves.
Food processing machines exist which are capable of combining up to three food materials of different tastes and textures into a multitude of shapes and sizes. Meat, potatoes, confectionery, cakes, sugar confectionery, pet foods, ice cream, health foods, snacks, vegetables and the like, can all be encapsulated, enclosed or encrusted. Oftentimes baking, drying or freezing requires specially tailored, filled dough balls to be prepared and accurately encrusted or encapsulated with filling for a specialized use. However, if a desired shape, such as a "D"-shape, is needed, existing technology and equipment is not readily adaptable to prepare such items. Therefore, by the present device, it is possible to increase the output of the standard encrusting and co-extruding processing and production system and to obtain, at the same time, the desired flattened "D"-shaped filled product.